Super Wide Field of Cygnus Mosaic

[Catanonia]

Hi everyone, it has been quite a long project this one for the summer months, imaging a large mosaic of the Cygnus area covering the North American Nebula, Pelican Nebula and beyond.

Most images you see of this region are of the NAN and Pelican, but I wanted to show in detail the wonderful structures surround the more common areas.

Some of the dust cloud structures to the right hand side of the image are amazing and so much forgotten about.

I have been doing this image for most of June and July and now have an image I am pleased with covering the NGC7000, IC 5070, Deneb and onwards towards the Crescent area.

I started with the North American and decided that this would make a super project for each year in the summer months, adding to it year by year. Who knows where it will end in a few years time.

So here is this years contribution to the mosaic (although I may add some more this year if we get more clear skies before August)

It comprises of 12 panels, each with a FOV of 300mm @ F4.9 using the Williams Optics WO66 and WO II Flattener. Each sub was 15mins and about 2 hours per panel so about 20 (ish) hours capturing here.

Taken with the QHY9 Mono CCD at -20 and a Ha 8nm filter. All sitting on top of a EQ6 Pro mount with guided with a ED80 + QHY5 + PHD.

Processing , stitching was all done in PixInsight with the final tweeks done with Photoshop CS5.

It has taken me about 2 days to process and stitch together these panels and it certainly tested the power and capacity of my computer with memory usage over 4gb on the final image processing.

The full 1:1 crop is over 12,000 pixels wide and here is a link for those brave enough

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10801850/Astro%20Pictures/Large%20Files/Cygnus%20Widefield.jpg Warning 30mb in size

I have reduced it to 4000 pixels for posting on the site.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I have in capturing and processing it. Hopefully I will expand it downwards and to the right all the way over the the Crescent Nebula soon, or next year.



Thanks for looking.

[Catanonia]

Quite surprised no one has commented.

Oh well, hopefully next year will expand it further.

[georg.viehoever]

Very nice. My attempts at this object are much more moderate.

Maybe you want to try the GradientMergeMosaic tool http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3295.msg22957#msg22957 to get rid of the remaining visible seams.

Georg

[Jules]

Quite surprised no one has commented.

Oh well, hopefully next year will expand it further.

Hi there,

I think you have done very well with this, I like it.

Regards

Julian

[Harry page]

Sorry Padwan

I missed this , you Have the force 

Harry

[Catanonia]

Very nice. My attempts at this object are much more moderate.

Maybe you want to try the GradientMergeMosaic tool http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3295.msg22957#msg22957 to get rid of the remaining visible seams.

Georg

Thanks, I tried the tool and on evenly lit panes it works amazingly well. But on this image for some reason, I just can't get it to work as well.

Might spend an evening re-doing the work flow and having a proper play with the new tool.

[Lex]

Hi

That's a serious one; i like it 
Congrats!!!

Lex

[georg.viehoever]

....
Thanks, I tried the tool and on evenly lit panes it works amazingly well. But on this image for some reason, I just can't get it to work as well.
...

Cat kindly gave me access to his data, so I gave it a try. The data consists of 4 files, see screenshot 1.

1. Create a master mosaic as follows: Use StarAlignment tool in Register/Union-Mosaic mode with Frame Adaption active (otherwise defaults, see screenshot 1) in 3 steps
- Reference image is view with  Part_1b, apply to view with Part_2, result is view named Part_2_mosaic
- Reference image Part_2_mosaic, apply to Part_3, result Part_3_mosaic
- Reference image Part_3_mosaic, apply to Part_4, result Part_4_mosaic
The resulting mosaic is good for registration, but despite frame adaption you can easily see the borders between the contributing images, see screenshot 2 (left full mosaic, right detail with seams).

2. Use this master mosaic to register all images: Use StarAlignment tool in Register/Match Images mode, Frame Adaption active, Reference image Part_4_mosaic, Target Images=Part_1b.tif, Part_2.tif, Part3.tif, Part4.tif. Define suitable output directory. See screenshot 3.

3. Merge those images via GradientMergeMosaic with default settings, Target Frames=Part_1b_r.fit, Part_2_r.fit, Part_3_r.fit, Part_4_r.fit. Needs 150 secs on my laptop. Screenshot 4: Left result with mask, right full result, bottom detail of critical central region.

Done, and no visible seams!  8)

Georg

[georg.viehoever]

Missing screenshots 3+4

[Catanonia]

Thanks for taking the time Georg.

Now using this method I realise that you moasiac gradient merge all images rather than panel at a time. The step I was missing was creating a reference mosaic image for the entire misuse rather than 1 panel at a time.

I basically took Harrys video for merging 2 panels and replicated it over and over for each new panel and ended up in a right mess.

Will try this when back home.

Thanks again.

[georg.viehoever]

In the attached screenshot -just for information- you see the difference between an ordinary image integration of the registered images, and the result produced by the GradientsMergeMosaic module. You see nicely how the MergeMosiac spreads the differences between image sections over a larger region, avoiding any sharp transitions between image parts.

Georg

[Jules]

Lovely Image Catanonia, interesting article Georg.

Regards

Julian

[Catanonia]

Thanks Georg

Worked beautifully and as promised here is a video for everyone else to use

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3369.0